I've tried researching this, but Im coming up with a lot of conflicting info. It appears, that since 1.3, Xenotech gear will drop in the level 50 story mode flashpoints. My primary toons haven't been running those for a *long* time, but I'm grinding away on an operative healer now and am very interested in the Xenotech chest piece (Field medic - http://www.torhead.com/item/J92lFr/xenotech-field-medics-suit) just for the look of it. Can anyone confirm that Xenotech chest will drop on something OTHER than KP SM and, if so, where? Location for the equivalent legs would be nice as well. Tor-loot doesn't appear to have updated since 1.2, so I dont think that has the correct info. Thanks!

God, I hope they move Mind Trick. The PVP on our server is intense and even a great deal of the pugs know whats up - people are playing it right and it makes for some great games. From the sounds of it, there's more than one server Mind Trick could just devour if this is the case. Fingers crossed.

You're throwing powershot too soon. Especially after 1.3. Fusion Missile (make it immediate and free) - Incendiary missile - Thermal detonator - one rapid shot - rail shot - unload - rail shot (if proc'd) or power shot. Use rapid shot and power shot to bring your heat back to a sustainable level then lather, rinse, and repeat. Mix in the occasional CC/Mez and the situational flame thrower, rock punch, jet burst, and you're good to go. Your basic damage rotation should look like the above though. After 1.3, you'll be able to spec armor penetration on rail shot and unload, so those will be the corner stones of your rotation. Power shot is nice, but you should only use it when you have time or unload fails to give you the free rail shot. Otherwise, it's damage isn't such a massive improvement over the rapid shots you could get off in the same time and you may be needlessly tying yourself down.

Timing thermal detonator and rail shot to land at the same time alongside three burn effects gets me called out pretty regularly.

Amazing how all the Mara/Sent defenses are EXACTLY what the Sorc/Sage healers were saying Pre-1.2 and I can't even BEGIN to count how many Mara/Sents told me to stop crying and L2P. Now I play PVP and Mara/Sent is starting to pull 4+ out of every team and do UNGODLY damage the whole time... hmmm.. Which of these statements came from the "nerf sorc" conversation and which came from the "nerf mara" one? "We're not OP!" "There are 10 of you in every warzone!" "It's a complicated class!" "All you do is spam 2 or 3 attacks over and over again!" "No one can deal with your output!" "Why play any other class?" "Put 3 of them on a team and that team wins!" "You can't win without at least one!" Blah blah blah. 1.2 FOTM'd maras and now the maras are crying that they're not OP ... using the same arguments we did. Enjoy your 1.3 nerf. Deep down, you know its coming. Any time one class starts to occupy 50% of warzone rosters ... you know it's coming.

Here's the question: If you got facerolled by a team of DPS coming through and just obliterating you, zerging every player, well coordinated, etc., would you come through to the forums and complain? Probably not. So, children, it's OK to win a Warzone because of DPS but *not* OK to win it because of healing. Sounds like they had a strategy you just haven't learned how to deal with. DPS elitists FTL.

Yeah. They're so great. That's why the PVP healer population has nose-dived.

Ding! I suspect alot of the current PVP issues are caused by the DRASTIC decline in PVP healers. On my server, it's becoming rare indeed to see a full healer of any variety in PVP. my main is sorc heals and he's PVE only now. No point in bringing him to WZs. Tried after 1.2 dropped and the results were ridiculous.

When a ball carrier tries to use the vents in Huttball ... When your entire team tries to attack one door on voidstar When your team doesn't try to hold mid in Huttball and starts fighting in its own bottom pit. Free balls for the other guys!

Awww ... all the mara/sents were fine with healing being nerfed into the ground but now that you're undeniably the OP kings of PVP (and your population has tripled) suddenly OP is ok and no big deal. What kills me is that half the double glow stick crowd is using the same arguments sorc/ sages were using against OUR nerfs ... and we had to put up with a month of you herp depts telling us to L2P and suck it up. I called this the day after 1.2 patch notes came out - Mara population would surge and they be the most overpowered and over-played class in PVP. And now they are. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. After weeks of Mara gloating, I hope they nerf you jags into the GROUND just so you can see how it feels. "Baaaaw we only have medium armor and multiple defense abilities! WAAA we have to close to melee range! BOO-HOO we can only disappear the second we get close to dead despite having no other stealth abilities." Same crowd was telling sorc heals and DPS that armor didn't matter, one defense was enough, being able to run away ( not vanish and become untargetable) made us so broken and OP. Get bent. Your nerf is coming and as the first REAL FotM you deserve it. I'm gonna laugh my butt off when it happens.

Can't figure out why people think powertech pyro is so dominant. I've been running a pyro merc lately and he's a death machine in WZs. Long range, high mobility - the only classes that really give me trouble are the Mara/sent since it demands a cc/snare of some kind. (still can't figure out why maras get the freakin force camo. That's so unbalanced it's not even funny ...) Great for kiting, ESP if a warrior is dumb enough to start combat with force charge. If he does, l jet boost him back and start the fire. I'd say I can kill him before the next jump prob 7/10 times. If they get into me at melee range, I'm toast though. Interestingly enough, mercs are more single-target than AOE, as opposed to powertech pyro, but since I respected the alt I think I haven't been top damage in maybe 5 of the last 30 WZs. Took awhile to get used to (coming off a sorc healer main), but merc pyro is highly underrated. I'm moving the whole fight and some serious DoT is going the entire time. It's truly entertaining to watch people engage me and then turn and run 8 seconds later when they realize what that fire is doing to them.

::facepalm:: Take away the sorc burst healing Give mercs the combat res Nerf sorc force regen Now the other healers still QQing over the Sorc AOE. That's the only thing LEFT for that class. Give it to the ops/mercs and you may as well just delete sorc/sage altogether. Jesus Christ. Why do people always think "balance" means "identical?" You can have my AOE when I can have your 2nd resource management skill, free ranged heal/damage, and heavier armor.

Looking at your screens, it seems you need to a) stop bringing in now healers. It's called basic RPG party construction and b)learn how to interrupt. A healers only job in life is to turn off your damage and now you're butt-hurt because some of them were doing it? L2P.

Sorc healers with 200K damage? Riiiiiiiiigghhhtttttt.... I bet they were pulling 500K protection at the same time, too.

By my math, it appears we're one short since sacrifice was made a legacy ability. Why not replace that with a willpower-based free range damage/heal? This would compliment healers and DPS well, since sorcs are already getting shorted due to the fact that our basic attack is tied to a stat we don't gear towards and used at a range we don't want to be at. It could be target-dependent, like the combat support cylinder, and do approximately the same amount of damage or healing that operatives and mercs do with their freebies. I'd even go so far as to suggest it could instead be a life or force tap mechanism, draining HP from a hostile target and restoring force (giving sorcs the same number of resource management abilities as every other class) but I realize that may be a little to far outside the box. So, BW, how about it? The player-base jury is still out on the sorc nerfs, but allowing us a some free ranged attack/heal instead of the completely meaningless saber strike as a free attack option could go a long way toward alleviating some of the outrage. The other ranged classes get something like this ... why not us?

A free-to-cast small HoT Ranged Heal/DPS. Something akin to diagnostic scan. Sorc/Sages are arguably the most resource-dependent class in the game and we're the only ones who have no viable options when we run dry. At least the "free" moves for BH/Trooper/IA/Smug are based on their stats - a sorc/sage is stuck with saber strike and doesn't even have the STR to back that move up, much less the armor to warrant closing the melee range.

LOL. You say they're useless and that you're going to buy the results off GTN. Sounds like someone else will enjoy a small mountain of your cash then. Doesn't seem to useless to me...

Oh, I didn't realize you were the definitive voice of the healing community, dman. Where have you been?!?!? Opinions =/= facts.

Amazes me that there's time for class nerfs and QoL add-ons while there are some many game-killing bugs left up.

I could kiss you. On the mouth. ... no tounge.

Seriously. There isn't a competent DPS in the game that can't stomp a healer into the ground in a matter of moments. Whining to make healers easier to kill just means they haven't figured out how to PVP yet. Probably a fresh 50 in the PVP bracket who thinks its unfair all the BM-geared healers can out do him.

DING! Judging from the boards, most DPSers only want healers who either a) are there to provide training dummy kills to them in PVP or B) exist solely to pocket-heal them at all times, no exceptions. Because, GOD FORBID a healer actually have an impact on a match or, boy, this is crazy, actually HEAL AWAY the damage done by the almighty DPS. Lemme see ... class selection: Sith Warrior .. ok, sound goods Bounty Hunter .. hmm, that could be interesting Imperial agent ... definetely some potential there Group Wanking Sock ... OH! I PICK THAT ONE! Its like this in every game with PVP. Damage dealers get all teary-eyed because there's actually a counter to them facerolling everything in the game. Boo-hoo.

Please keep us posted with any data you can pull. I'd appreciate it.

Ok, so we'll go down that route: CC? What do sorcs have that at least one of the other healers dont? Force slow. That's it. A 6-second slow that can be negated by a warrior/knights *rage builder.* Hmm. Not great. Take a closer look at some of the CC - sorc AOE knockback, for example, is actually a smaller pushback than the merc. You can test that yourself. I have. What about escape? Ok, force speed. Except the op healer can go camo and ninja vanish. Hmmm... AOE heal? Yeah, certainly better than the Kolto Missile. It's also a 31 point skill, so it's much later than the missile and reserved strictly for pure healers. Believe it or not, there are hybrid mercs out there with the kolto missile. It also has a 2-sec cast time and requires the target remain relatively stationary in order to get any effect. Saying that makes them the best is a bit counter-intuitive. They have to invest heavily and completely negate any chance of hybrid abilities to get it. There's a trade-off there, for sure. The bubble? Yup. That's unique. It's also only good per-target every 17 or 20 sec. It's a heal spell - nothing else, especially since the damage it prevents is pre-mitigation, which means burst/spike eats it up pretty quickly. As it stands now with 1.2, it will be the ONLY sorc/sage burst spell of any kind whatsoever. Extrication? Ok, that's cool. How about merc and his pair of "cast this for free" and "cast this instantly" spell. I don't see anything like that on the sorc list. Saying "one class has this and the other doesn't" is a bit of a misleading argument, especially when the debate is about a core mechanic, like healing. People play sorc healers to heal, not because of force speed. That's no better than saying people play merc healers because of Rocket Punch. One would expect the light-armor, no mitigation, no defensive CD, no free cast heal spell to equal out the the highest-output healer, which, sadly, just won't be true with 1.2. There's very little you can do to convince me that force speed, force slow, and extricate are worth running a sorc who - has the worst potential DPS output (particularly relevant for PVP) - has the lowest survivability, thanks to light armor and a total lack of defensive CDs - has no free-cast ranged heal - has the only resource management ability in the game, across any class, that requires him to take damage to restore resources. If you take a look at a majority of the MMO's out there, typically the cloth armor guy has the highest output in either damage or heals, depending on what they're doing. It's the innate trade-off for being the easiest one to kill. The "Glass Cannon" philosophy - a lot of "boom" but a much quicker "bust" if anything comes after him. That's cool - you make the output vs. survivability trade-off. I've done it across many titles for more than a decade. SWTOR doesn't do this, though. We make the survivability trade-off as sorcs/sages, but there's no "boom" in return for it with 1.2. I don't even play a DPS, but I can see from the tree what the changes will do to them. Why should they be so fragile if their damage is so much lower than someone in heavier armor? Why should I make the survivability trade off if a merc can stroll up and put up just as much healing as I do in heavy armor while simultaneously be able to defend himself better AND not slit his wrists in order to regen resources? I'm a particular fan of the 60% argument for ops and mercs. The threads around this are making a pretty good point in regards to that, but there's one additional thing to consider there: If you drain a merc or operative completely, he'll be back to 100% in 35 seconds. What's more, he can continue to output heals or damage while that recharges. While it's certainly not an earth-shattering number, it is roughly equivalent to our small HoT and at about the same pace. That's nothing to sneeze at - I've kept more than one person alive in their 1v1 with my merc using that in PVP. If you drain a sorc completely, it takes ~75 seconds to recharge and any further actions during that time will slow that counter down even further. And, please, don't try to mention saber strike. My tier-2 decked sorc has 105 strength. I'm not closing to melee range to whiff a bunch of double-digits in a HM.

Interesting. I haven't been copied, so it's tough to tell myself - just relying on the info posted by PTS 50s. Still, though, it would seem that logic dictate the rest of it hold true. Sage/Sorc healers, and sage/sorc healers alone, are getting hit by a bus that doesn't target anyone else. Imagine if a single raid boss had an ability that only targeted, say, Jugg/Guardian tanks and hit them for 15% of their life every 20-30 seconds or so. If you tank him with any other type, say shadow or powertech tanks, the boss never uses that move. Would anyone bring jugg/guardian tanks along on that run?